4 Tips for writing 1500 words a day

Post navigation

If you can write 1500 words a day you can publish multiple novels a year and have a substantial daily accomplishment. Your writing will improve and you will get into a rhythm of creating that feels natural. I’ve done this for sustained periods of time and seen long term results with my writing from it. Is writing 1500 words a day for everyone? No. But if you’re serious about being a writer it’s a good goal to have. Creating 1500 words of content a day is enough for a short short story or half a chapter a day in some cases. The kind of progress you can be proud of.

4 Tips for writing 1500 words a day

Set time aside

Have a portion of every day that is devoted for writing. If you’re a part time writer, devote half of your hour long lunch break and then another hour after work. Pick a time before bed or right after working. On weekends maybe you write in the morning. Make it an important part of the day. Writing should be like eating dinner or brushing your teeth. Importantly, let your family know that this time is your time. Nothing interrupts creativity more than distractions. This is your writing time. If you are serious about increasing your writing output put this time aside.

Quantity vs Quality

Quality is better than quantity in the long run of our careers. However, when you are first starting your journey to 1500 words a day you may write some crap. But then again you might write some crap if you did 100 words a day. The idea is that if you write enough you will start writing better things. You will create so much content that you learn to write better and more efficiently. The more you work at getting to a consistent 1500 words a day the higher the quality of those 1500 words will be. Some days will be wasted on stumbling through bad or unfinished ideas. That’s ok. No matter what you do you will write things that are bad at some point. But once you get through those bad works you will create better works consistently.

Read books or listen to audio books

Putting the time aside to pump out 1500 words a day can be taxing on your schedule. This can make it hard to find time to read. But you can put TV shows and Netflix aside you can find the time to get through two to four books a month easily. Reading will drive your creativity more that watching shows and movies in that it will show you how other writers have described scenes or handled difficult situations in their books. For those who think they don’t have time to read but want to write, how can you be a writer if you are not a reader? It’d be like being a football player and not knowing how football works. You must study your craft and practice to improve. Those who don’t have time to read can listen to audio books traveling to and from work. If you have a job where you can wear a headset you can listen to audio books all day catching bits of interesting parts of books that will help with your own writing style.

Do it!

Don’t say you are going to start and do it for a week. Do it every day. Do it consistently. When you miss a day. Don’t stress about it. Just do it the next day and the day after day. Once 1500 words is a habit your production will explode and your mind will be wired to produce. This isn’t an ideal amount of writing in a day. If you make it a must for yourself you will see improvements and you will have more progress in your writings than by sitting and worrying about what to write next. If it’s bad you can always delete it (or print it off and burn it). Tell yourself you have to do it. It’s your homework from your passion.

I hope this has helped some people. I have seen a huge increase in my productivity and my ability to think through stories creatively by implementing this strategy.

Post navigation

7 Comments

I’m with you!
I now steal any time I can in the day to get some writing done. And yes, there are some days where you know that what your pen is scraping down is crap, but you just have to keep going when that happens. As long as you can get the idea down, as long as you can catch something of the emotion you’re aiming for, the words can be gone back and changed later.

Exactly FrJameson. It’s not always about quality. I found myself progressing a lot more as a writer when I stopped worrying about the quality of my writing until after I’d gotten the main idea out. It’s astounding what a few revisions can change.